Receive the latest local updates in your inbox

A 33-year-old man is behind bars, accused of raping and murdering an 84-year-old North County woman in September 2001.

DNA evidence linked Mexican national Alejandro Avalos Fernandez to the rape and murder of Gladys Conrad, a retired psychiatrist found dead in her Carlsbad home in 2001, according to investigators. Police said Conrad was strangled.

Forensic experts matched samples with a 2004 attempted rape of a 64-year-old woman in Los Angeles, police said. That case went cold for four years until Fernandez's DNA was collected during his arrest on a narcotics charges in 2008.